The Trump administration is ramping up eminent domain efforts for wall construction along the southern border, despite stay-at-home orders sweeping the country.

Nick Fouriezos reports for OZY that the federal government has filed 26 new eminent domain cases this year, including 16 since the beginning of March. “‘They are trying to take advantage of the pandemic, when lawyers are not going to be as willing to take cases and many people are sheltering in places,’ says Ricky Garza, a staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, whose lawyers are fighting some of the administration’s eminent domain cases in court.”

Welcome to Friday’s edition of Noorani’s Notes. Have a story you’d like us to include? Email me at [email protected].

“WE ARE ALL IN THIS TOGETHER” – More than 8% of nurses in the United States are Asian, according to Minority Nurse, and 25% of health care workers are immigrants. In an op-ed for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Linda Smales, a nursing professor who is also the daughter of immigrants, writes: “I am especially worried about the displays of xenophobia that have arisen during this crisis. Asian Americans have been specifically targeted in recent weeks, and the virus is scary enough without having to worry that my friends and family will be attacked.” In response, she and her sister partnered with nail salons owned by members of Pittsburgh’s Vietnamese community to donate “approximately 30,000 masks, 245,000 gloves, and around 150 bottles of hand sanitizer and soap from more than 20 salons … to more than 20 health care facilities, and we are just getting started.” As Smales points out, “We are all in this together, every single one of us.”

RELEASED – A 33-year-old Mexican immigrant with symptoms of COVID-19 was released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody in a wheelchair earlier this week after suffering “severe” abuses while detained, according to his attorney. Dianne Solis reports for The Dallas Morning News that “[t]he attorney, Linda Corchado, said her client had a fever, night sweats and body aches before his release this week from the Otero County detention center in New Mexico … Around the nation, lawyers, clergy and advocates are calling for the urgent release of many immigrant detainees because of the spread of the COVID-19 disease in close quarters.” Meanwhile, Matt Katz reports for NPR that “ICE says it is trying to reduce the population of all detention facilities. About 32,300 people are currently being held by ICE, the lowest number during the Trump administration.”

DENIED – In more great reporting for The Dallas Morning News, Dianne Solis and María Méndez profile a handful of families to highlight how U.S. citizens with undocumented family members are being denied economic relief from Washington because of the mixed status of their households — even if they have paid their taxes. “The CARES Act excludes unauthorized immigrants and most U.S. citizens or legal immigrant spouses who file taxes jointly with unauthorized immigrants or immigrants without a Social Security number … This includes families where there are U.S. citizen children of unauthorized immigrants.” Meanwhile, Gerard Matthews at the Arkansas Nonprofit News Network looks into the state’s efforts to protect immigrants. Mireya Reith, founding executive director of Arkansas United, points out that the immigrant workforce has “the least flexibility when it comes to social distancing or missing work to either get tested or self-isolate. Our economy and state’s health cannot rebound if we do not address the health of these immigrant workers.”



MORATORIUM – Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a statement yesterday calling for a “moratorium on all employment-based immigration until the U.S. returns to pre-coronavirus crisis unemployment levels,” reports Adam Shaw at Fox News. While Sessions cites the latest unemployment numbers, he ignores the reality that immigrants of various skill levels have demonstrated their critical importance to the U.S. economy before and after the pandemic — and they’ll be critical to a robust economic recovery. This will be the leading edge of the opposition’s argument in the months and years to come.
PATTERN AND PRACTICE – Two companies are suing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) for frequent denials of H-1B visas for foreign workers, reports Genevieve Douglas for Bloomberg Law. “The agency has ‘a pattern and practice’ of misinterpreting H-1B requirements so that the position of market research analyst doesn’t satisfy criteria meant to determine whether a position qualifies as a specialty occupation, MadKudu Inc. and Quick Fitting Inc. said in a lawsuit filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.”
ONLY IN AMERICA – Our latest episode of “Only in America” finishes off our agriculture series, “Growing a Better System,” with a conversation with Soren Bjorn, president of Driscoll’s of the Americas. An immigrant and a recently naturalized U.S. citizen, Soren talks about the essential work of immigrant farmworkers during the coronavirus pandemic, the importance of food security and the need for a modernized visa process.
Thanks for reading,

Ali